BALTIC REGION: Europe's worst peacetime disaster at sea, 10 years ago yesterday, was remembered throughout the Baltic region, reports Daniel McLaughlin.
The Baltic region united yesterday to mark a decade since the sinking of the ferry Estonia, when 852 people died in Europe's worst peacetime disaster at sea.
But the dozens of memorial services across Estonia, Finland and Sweden were clouded by strident demands from many victims' relatives for a new investigation of the catastrophe, and accusations that politicians and investigators were lying about its cause.
The 13,600-tonne ferry capsized in heavy seas off the Finnish coast at about 1 a.m. on September 28th, 1994, en route from the Estonian capital, Tallinn, to Stockholm with almost 1,000 people on board.
Harrowing accounts from some of the 137 survivors recall mayhem as a series of heavy bangs rocked the ship and it began to keel over, sending passengers tumbling down corridors and through bars and lounges that were suddenly pitched vertical.
As power onboard failed and communication broke down between crew members, many people were unable to find lifejackets or release lifeboats, while others were entangled in ropes or sucked below by the massive ship as it slipped into the frigid Baltic in just 45 minutes.
More than 750 bodies are still inside the wreck, which lies 80 metres down in international waters off the south-west coast of Finland.
In Stockholm, King Carl XVI Gustaf, Queen Silvia and the Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Göran Persson, attended a memorial ceremony for the country's almost 500 victims.
In Turku, Finland, where the rescue operations were based, political and religious leaders attended a special church service.
In Tallinn, President Arnold Ruutel said at a wreath-laying ceremony that the accident had left "a tremendous void in every \ home and soul. This void cannot be filled by even the most beautiful and comforting words."
But amid the remembrance, newspaper headlines in the Baltic echoed demands from survivors for convincing answers about why the Estonia sank and who was responsible.
A 1997 official report blamed poorly designed bow-door locks, bad weather and human error for the disaster.
The 270-page dossier concluded that the ferry was going too quickly in rough seas, and that weak locks on the bow visor - the ramp which vehicles used to board the ferry - failed and allowed water to flood the car deck, fatally destabilising the ship.
The report did not find anyone onboard guilty of criminal negligence, deeming that the ferry had been seaworthy before the accident.
Many survivors and victims' relatives have been fighting that verdict ever since.
"The government's handling of Estonia has on several occasions proved to be insufficient and faulty.
"The decisions to neither launch a new investigation nor recover the bodies of the dead were taken on inaccurate - or straight out false - pretences," Mr Lennart Berglund, the chairman of a victims' relatives group, told a crowd of onlookers in central Stockholm yesterday.
"The causes of Europe's worst maritime catastrophe in peacetime must be examined, and people must be held responsible. That may mean that the entire ship will need to be raised."
The Estonian media have been a particular source of conjecture regarding the ferry, airing reports that it may have been sunk by accidental onboard explosions from smuggled weapons, or intentionally scuttled by mafia groups or by Russian agents preventing a piece of their military technology being shipped to the west.
Estonia's state-run television stirred up more controversy this week by showing an interview with a US businessman, Mr Gregg Bemis, who organised a diving operation to the wreck of the Estonia four years ago.
"There are proofs indicating that the accident may have been caused by a bomb explosion," Mr Bemis said.
A report commissioned by the German builders of the Estonia - who were furious that the official inquest focused blame on their design of the ferry - said it had been poorly maintained, and suggested that a series of small explosions could have contributed to its demise.
"At least on one important point, Estonia's seaworthiness, they are lying to our face," Ms Inga-Britt Ahlenius, the former head of the Swedish State Audit Institution, said recently of the official investigators.